


Candy and Fresh Snow

by curi_o



Series: Pain for Jayne [12]
Category: Firefly
Genre: Content: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-29
Updated: 2006-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curi_o/pseuds/curi_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Miranda and the Reavers, he’d finally got it figured out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Candy and Fresh Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Pain for Jayne prompt: Sweet
> 
> _I love you, oh, so well, like a kid loves candy and fresh snow._  
>  _I love you, oh, so well, enough to fill up heaven, overflow, and fill hell._  
>  _Love you, oh, so well._
> 
>  
> 
> _— "Oh", Dave Matthews Band_

* * *

Kaylee was sweet like strawberries’n chocolate. Seven types of sin and none for him. He’d realized that after she’d pursued Simon so doggedly an’ finally caught the core-bred boy in her arms. 

He’d been jealous for a while, seein’ as he’d been around a hell of a lot longer than the doctor, but he’d got over it. Damn hard to stay mad around Kaylee. She was the human heart an’ soul of Serenity, had an almost psychic connection to the boat’s metal heart. 

‘Course, that weren’t nothin’ like the psychic connection little River Tam had with the ‘verse at large. That girl was all manner of amazin’, an’ he knew that now.

All his instincts went against keepin’ her safe, at first, given the reward an’ the craziness an’ the fondness for sharp objects an’ other kindsa hurtin’ him. She’d unsettled him, thrown his balance.

But after Miranda and the Reavers, he’d finally got it figured out. What got him now was how she’d come through the Reavers with not a scratch on her body, but a grenade explosion on a routine job had her next to lifeless.

He cradled her broken body in his big arms as he ran for the boat, covered in the red that kept her alive. He felt sick to remember how she’d said he looked better in the color.

It didn’t make no logical sense, when he looked back on the moment later, that he could be starin’ into her eyes and runnin’ at the same time, but he knew he had.

“Don’t you know the best things in the ‘verse have a bit of scary to ‘em? Ain’t nothin’ worth havin’ can’t hurt you someways or another. An’ you might be scary an’ dangerous, but you’re shiny as new-fallen snow, girl, an’ I don’t know but I might be startin’ to love you. So you just hold on to that, that even the biggest _hun dan_ in the livin’ ‘verse loves you.”

He hadn’t known it would be the last time he spoke to her, had just wanted to keep her calm and reassured and tied to the livin’ side of things. He weren’t even sure he had spoken out loud, since he’d been runnin’ somethin’ fierce, but he knew she’d heard and understood.

“An’ there’s lots more folk lots better’n me love you, too, an’ we all want you to stay here with us. But if’n you gotta go, you just remember what I told you, that we love you. ‘Cause love’s what brought you to us in the first place, and damned if that love ain’t changed ever’one ever spent time ‘round it. Hell, I didn’t even _believe_ in love a’fore you all got here, not past my family. An’ now you’re my family, too. You’re part of this family an’ we love you. You hold on to that.”

Her big brown eyes had been full of tears as he laid her down on the infirmary table. He’d crouched in the darkened hallway, watching through his own tears, as she died.


End file.
